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A survey conducted by CRN in June 2018 reveals why some resellers are embracing propositions with enthusiasm and driving customer migration, while others are resisting the increasingly intense pull of the cloud.

To grow, to remain relevant to the customers, and to remain profitable, IT channels (in all their forms) will have to master a number of business model transformations in the cloud and digital transformation era. Read more to learn about the key transformations that IT channels will need to address, in order to bring new capabilities to customers and be successful in the future.

In the wake of reporting a 49 per cent jump in its subscriptions model revenue, Citrix is revving up its efforts to push partners towards the cloud.

The company launched its Ultimate Rewards partner programme earlier this year, as part of its transition to the cloud. The programme encourages partners to sell cloud to customers, along with providing training and support.

The programme came about after a survey was carried out among Citrix's partners. "They confirmed by majority that they had seen that their revenue would come from cloud-based services and that's why we introduced the Ultimate Rewards," explained Justin Sutton-Parker (pictured), director of Northern Europe partners at Citrix. He believes that this is the right strategy for the company and it will focus on it for the next 12 months.

"[It] will be focused around making sure that the partners can take the cloud message to their customers, help them to understand what that message is and then help them to verticalise that," he said.

The new partner programme comes on the heels of the introduction of a new subscription-based model, which accounted for 15 per cent ($103m) of the company's total revenue for Q1 this year. However, Sutton-Parker said that subscriptions accounted for around a quarter of the total revenue for its northern Europe market, due to the Nordic countries' penchant for adopting new services quickly.

Sutton-Parker was quick to assuage any fears partners may have about this new income model compared with the traditional ‘product' model of selling a licence on a three-year basis, saying that it evens out the cashflow for partners. He attributed this shift in revenue model to the changing buying behaviour of the customer.

"In the new models of consumption, the way they are taking subscription licences it might be that they buy them for a year and then renew them in a year. It's not so much looking at the profitability, it's more the spikes in revenue, so you won't get the three-year spikes associated with subscription that you would with buying for a year's worth of product," he explained.